Rich

Certain characteristics tend to show up again and again. If you admire people with money you might notice they tend towards frugality and index fund investing or own a business. You can emulate that easy enough. You might notice many travel and want to do the same. By following their example you increase the odds you will accumulate more resources to travel.

There is no guarantee you will get the same results. A person in prison will have limitations from the rest of the population. Nelson Mandela is a perfect example. He gained the respect of the guards and the people of a nation while imprisoned. He was fortunate that he was released and led South Africa for many years. Other people doing the same thing will almost certainly get a different result.

This blog is about wealth. It might depress you when I say you can search the traits of those you admire and incorporate those traits only to find less admiration than those you worked to emulate. That misses the whole point. Successful integration of quality traits do not guarantee anything and shouldn’t even be the goal! It is the daily effort to improve yourself with the traits you acquired that makes you wealthy.

The daily journey is the reward, the riches you seek. You can examine the admired of your community and work to integrate those positive traits into your persona. But please, kind readers, make plenty of room for you. Explore the qualities already inside you.

Ever since I disclosed my net worth broke eight figures strange emails have been coming in. Another milestone was passed without fanfare. Past experience had me used to the lack of excitement financial milestones caused.

A theme among many emails revolved around my rate of return. I never really thought of it that way. It was just a thing that happened because I saved a large percentage of my income and invested the bulk of my excess money in index funds. One commenter said he was impressed because my rate of return over the last 20 years was 11% while the S&P rose only 8.5% per year on average. I don’t know if it’s true; I never broke the numbers down that way. All I care is that it grew to a lot.

What the emails and comments forget when they calculate my rate of return is that I added funds over the last 20 years. If I reached my million dollar goal when I was 32 and never dropped another dime in the kitty my internal rate of return would be impressive. Instead, I added excess funds every year. If I analyzed my real return including the additional invested fund my internal rate of return would be less impressive.

Things have been looking up at The Wealthy Accountant. Traffic is increasing and the audience is expanding. Even better, the original demographic attracted to the site has expanded, bringing in more people to benefit from the information provided.

The newfound success also causes problems. People unfamiliar with the FI (financial independence) community are frequently shocked at the way I present information. It’s an easy thing to do. Right up there in the title is the word accountant. The blog ought to be about taxes and similar stuff found in a CPAs office. Then you open the cover and find me standing there. Don’t worry! It would scare me too.

There is a major misunderstanding on what this blog is about. Yes, the word “accountant” is in the title. There are a few reasons for that. First, it’s getting hard to find an unused url in the dot com universe anymore. Second, I don’t want you to be an accountant (unless you want to be), but I want you to THINK like an accountant. There is a difference.

The lottery is back in the news with promises of a rich reward for a very small number of people who randomly pick numbers matching the officially drawn numbers. The odds are hundreds of millions to one. But you can’t win if you don’t play. Just one ticket, one little ticket. A single dollar. Better buy two; make that three.

Lottery sales shy rocket when the jackpot rises to mega levels. The impossible odds are still just as bad when the jackpot is massive. The one question I don’t hear people asking is: If nobody won the last time they drew numbers and millions played, what chance do you have of winning?